Naa, it's actually even more powerful. It's on half the cooldown, it doesn't leave you at 15% health after the killing blow, and tanks are now capable of leveraging excess durability into additional DPS in ways that weren't available in Wrath.

It doesn't leave you at 15% health if you are taken from >15-0 by the killing blow.If the special brought you to 2% health, and the following melee killed you, you'd definitely still be at 2% health.

The Vengeance cap and the flagging of abilities to not grant Vengeance should make it harder to abuse using this to play Vengeance. Maybe not impossible, but definitely not the same as now where you could use it to just cheese Decap to the face with zero cd's.

Darielle wrote:It doesn't leave you at 15% health if you are taken from >15-0 by the killing blow.If the special brought you to 2% health, and the following melee killed you, you'd definitely still be at 2% health.

The Vengeance cap and the flagging of abilities to not grant Vengeance should make it harder to abuse using this to play Vengeance. Maybe not impossible, but definitely not the same as now where you could use it to just cheese Decap to the face with zero cd's.

If you're at 2% health, take a hit that would kill you, have it fully absorbed, stay at 2%, do nothing, and proceed to die anyway, you and your healers fail hilariously badly at Warcraft, and might consider taking up an easier hobby, like perhaps learning to put on pants, or tying your own shoes. Also, you desperately need the overpowered proc and should not be considering the dps cloak under any circumstances. Seriously, if that's the strongest argument you have, you might want to rethink your position. The point here is that oldschool AD brought you down to 15% after a screwup (or intentional use), and required some kind of reaction (from you or a healer) in order to bring the fight back under control. The niche case of being below 15% health, getting saved from death, and getting healed to 15% was and is meaningless, because in any case you are still in a position where an immediate emergency intervention is required. The proc, as written, will leave you at 100% health after absorbing a hit for more than 100% of your health. That's pretty goddamned strong. Lag out and miss something important? Saved. Brain fart? Saved. Cat unplugged your keyboard? Saved.

As far as the second point goes: The additional survivability can be converted into DPS through gearing, in addition to any microadjustments made in play. And, while you might not be able to get stupid-vengeance from cheesing abilities, you'll still (as you granted), be able to leverage it into moderate vengeance gains in a lot of situations.

The proc, as written, is so overpowered that I sincerely doubt it can be allowed to go live in it's current state.

If you're at 2% health, take a hit that would kill you, have it fully absorbed, stay at 2%, do nothing, and proceed to die anyway, you and your healers fail hilariously badly at Warcraft, and might consider taking up an easier hobby, like perhaps learning to put on pants, or tying your own shoes. Also, you desperately need the overpowered proc and should not be considering the dps cloak under any circumstances. Seriously, if that's the strongest argument you have, you might want to rethink your position. The point here is that oldschool AD brought you down to 15% after a screwup (or intentional use), and required some kind of reaction (from you or a healer) in order to bring the fight back under control.

You're misunderstanding.

My point is that this proc doesn't remove the need for healer reaction to bring the fight back under control. The instance of mechanic that literally take you from full health to 0 is relatively rare - sure, it would trigger on taking a Ji-Kun Rake to the face if you forgot ShOR after 2+ stacks, or take a Decap to the face, or what not, but even most burst mechanics don't take you from 100-0 in one clean stroke. Any major damage mechanic that ticks, by nature (which is really a lot of them nowadays since Blizzard has been substituting 1-hit Breaths for 3-4 tick Breaths) will NOT leave you at 100% health.

That doesn't make the proc useless, but it's exaggering its power significantly to suggest that it just has you at full health, or that the situations where you won't still need healer interaction are niche. At the end of the day, if the proc has actually procced, it's already been incredibly useful because it just saved you a death regardless of where your health is at.

I'd find that Cat unplugging your keyboard is a BIT more niche or Lagging out is a also more niche. Depending on the Cat of course.

Focusing on the exacts is probably over-thinking it, to be honest. It's still a stupidly overpowered proc.

Heroic progression (and progression in general, to be honest) is all about minimizing mistakes. You hone execution until the entire raid makes few enough mistakes that the boss dies.

I have certainly caused a number of wipes this tier, and more near-wipes, by making a mistake and dying. I'm pretty skeptical of the tanks that claim they never make mistakes and never die. I suspect they're either over-exaggerating their skill or have very selective memories. Or they're clearing the content 3 months later than everyone else with a lot of extra gear acting as a crutch.

This proc lets you make one mistake per minute without penalty. It's the quintessential "do-over" button that doesn't cost your raid a wipe, time, etc. It's rare that someone wasn't already reacting to save me from a bad situation; this proc will generally buy them the extra second it takes to get off that clutch Swiftmend, Greater Heal, or LoH that would have arrived half a second too late.

If you can honestly look over your raid logs and determine that your death has never caused a wipe, and that you have to carry your bad raid DPS to meet berserk timers, then by all means skip the tank cloak effect. I suspect the truth of the matter is that this is a vanishingly small percentage of tanks, and mostly 10-man players that are only clearing relevant bosses 2- to 3- months behind the curve. The rest are just delusional.

The point, though: this proc is more powerful than oldschool AD's overpowered proc. The situations in which the proc is *less* useful are always meaningless. The situations in which it's *more* useful aren't always. Plus it has half the cooldown.

theckhd wrote:If you can honestly look over your raid logs and determine that your death has never caused a wipe, and that you have to carry your bad raid DPS to meet berserk timers, then by all means skip the tank cloak effect.

I still suspect that for a given level of non-squishiness, the tank cloak is worth more (or at least similar) net DPS than the DPS cloak. Or possibly you're tanking really trivial content, I suppose. I suspect the nature of the proc allows you to give away enough other stats safely to overwhelm the value of the DPS-cloak proc.

Sagara wrote:For the record, it half was, and it half was a kick in those that think spouting theck's numbers around without thinking makes them sound smart.

I see what you did there.

I suspect the nature of the proc allows you to give away enough other stats safely to overwhelm the value of the DPS-cloak proc.

How would you quantify this? Is it possible to put a value on "trading off X points means you can play more recklessly with no more than one death event per minute for a Y gain in DPS"? Is there some point at which you can trade off those X points ... and then just equip the DPS cloak for even more hilarity? Is this something parse hunters do? I can't wrap my head around how you would configure a gear set like this.

Theckd wrote:If you can honestly look over your raid logs and determine that your death has never caused a wipe, and that you have to carry your bad raid DPS to meet berserk timers, then by all means skip the tank cloak effect. I suspect the truth of the matter is that this is a vanishingly small percentage of tanks, and mostly 10-man players that are only clearing relevant bosses 2- to 3- months behind the curve. The rest are just delusional.

There are far more tanks that are 10m and "only" clearing bosses months behind -- I don't know that the number is vanishingly small, but I don't know an easy way to actually get at these numbers. I'm certainly one of them, and for tanks in my situation tank death is not generally a major concern. But yes, any tank doing content where their death is remotely a concern should be doing everything they can to make sure they aren't the point of failure of the raid.

It will amuse me to no end if they nerf the tank proc to a randomly activated 10% dodge chance.

I suspect the nature of the proc allows you to give away enough other stats safely to overwhelm the value of the DPS-cloak proc.

How would you quantify this? Is it possible to put a value on "trading off X points means you can play more recklessly with no more than one death event per minute for a Y gain in DPS"? Is there some point at which you can trade off those X points ... and then just equip the DPS cloak for even more hilarity? Is this something parse hunters do? I can't wrap my head around how you would configure a gear set like this.

Quantify? Fucked if I know. But the day I got that cloak, I'd start by trading both trinkets for pure DPS options, every stamina gem I had for a gem with DPS stats, and I would still be well ahead of where I started on survival. I'm not sure it's possible to overstate just how powerful cheat death once per minute is. Even when I was parse-hunting, I wasn't close to death a whole once per minute. It is SO MUCH safety margin.

I mean, you have to develop some kind of instinct for this sort of thing as a tank. Theck hasn't quite developed the "read a WoL to evaluate your raid and tell you the ideal stats" program just yet. If you're not dying, you start trading away pure survival (stamina) for DPS (haste). Haste has survival benefits, sure, but it's not as good as stamina. You're giving some (small) amount of survival up to get haste. So, I recognize that's a bit handwavy, but when parse-hunting, you make a point of operating on the thinnest survival margins you can - and it's a valuable skill to learn, because it'll give you some kind of idea of what you can get away with, and how to play when survival really is a challenge. Anyway, it's from that perspective that I'm coming from when I say that I'm pretty sure that cloak proc is worth more DPS than you're giving it credit for. I was a pretty good parse hunter, I know where the margins are. And a proc like that is worth a whole metric fuckton of margin.

And yes - equipping the DPS cloak for even more hilarity is almost exactly what parse-hunters would do. Once things were on farm.

Anyway, I can't prove it or anything. But I do have a pretty good track record.

The main question with the cloaks, is how long will it take to get. If its 3+ months, other gearing both tank and healers, will massively rebalance the scales between the dps and tanking one. First kill of Birdy heroic, the 2nd rake would almost one shot me with a cd up, now I can take 2 without even bothering with a cd, I try to still play optimally on the boss but its hard to focus fully on fights you have on farm for months.

Will have to see how other gearing up works this coming tier, but switching cloaks again would be a pain in the bank. It's around 10k isn't it to buy another?

My understanding of the questline is that it's all solo-play except for the world bosses part.

Thus i wouldnt be surprised if people will have it pn week 1 of 5.4 even if droprates are stupid

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Meloree wrote:Quantify? Fucked if I know. But the day I got that cloak, I'd start by trading both trinkets for pure DPS options, every stamina gem I had for a gem with DPS stats, and I would still be well ahead of where I started on survival. I'm not sure it's possible to overstate just how powerful cheat death once per minute is. Even when I was parse-hunting, I wasn't close to death a whole once per minute. It is SO MUCH safety margin.

I mean, you have to develop some kind of instinct for this sort of thing as a tank. Theck hasn't quite developed the "read a WoL to evaluate your raid and tell you the ideal stats" program just yet. If you're not dying, you start trading away pure survival (stamina) for DPS (haste). Haste has survival benefits, sure, but it's not as good as stamina. You're giving some (small) amount of survival up to get haste. So, I recognize that's a bit handwavy, but when parse-hunting, you make a point of operating on the thinnest survival margins you can - and it's a valuable skill to learn, because it'll give you some kind of idea of what you can get away with, and how to play when survival really is a challenge. Anyway, it's from that perspective that I'm coming from when I say that I'm pretty sure that cloak proc is worth more DPS than you're giving it credit for. I was a pretty good parse hunter, I know where the margins are. And a proc like that is worth a whole metric fuckton of margin.

And yes - equipping the DPS cloak for even more hilarity is almost exactly what parse-hunters would do. Once things were on farm.

Anyway, I can't prove it or anything. But I do have a pretty good track record.

You know, that's make a very interesting blog entry - how to evaluate yourself in success like in failure, how to evaluate your tradeoff options and choose the right ones. Right now, I'm really working on [not dead or nearly dead] -> [lose stam for moar haeest], until I actually DO die, as I'm absolute crap at parse-reading. Now if only there was a nice Paladin tanking blog somewhere out there

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

It misses the key part, your not comparing apples to apples. You need to look at the death events individually and see if the cheat death would have actually saved you or if a fraction of a second after you would have died again resulting in no net gain. Its not something you can look at parses, since they don't tell you what you would have been hit for, after you died.

Your also unlikely to see two death events close together on purses because you would be dead after the first and if rezzed the healers will probably be watching you more closely afterwards.

Well, usually, when I'm close to dying, healers have this thing called instinct where suddently a fuckton of heals are headed my way pronto. The whole "watch more closely afterwards" works just as well after a non-lethal health drop surprised them.

Honestly, the "you die, and die AGAIN" doesn't hold much water, especially in the aftermath of the automatic Ardent Defender being nerfed to hell and beyond because how stupid OP it was.

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

Most tank deaths are caused by healers trading off tank heals to save the raid, so instincts isn't really relevant. Healers don't choose to let you die, they are too busy to stop it. When I am healing I ask myself can I gamble on the tank surviving long enough for this raid heal to land and then a 2sec greater heal to land.

Ardent defender was only overpowered because people exploited it to get around certain boss abilities. I am assuming bliz will design the bosses around that knowledge.

Current ardent defender still allowed that (and was nerfed) even if it's active.

The OPness of old AD was the fact it was passive, allowing you to gamble a lot, cause "if i do something wrong, AD backs me up".

As I said, people who don't realize how blatantly OP the tank cloak proc is, clearly didn't play Prot pala (or with one) at heroic level in WotLK.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

stevos wrote:Most tank deaths are caused by healers trading off tank heals to save the raid, so instincts isn't really relevant. Healers don't choose to let you die, they are too busy to stop it. When I am healing I ask myself can I gamble on the tank surviving long enough for this raid heal to land and then a 2sec greater heal to land.

So basically, what we would need are like 2 extra secs to be brought out of the danger zone by the healers? Like, say, if some proc happened to negate a deadly attack? Gotcha. Also, before the what if there are TWO deadly attacks back to back!!! that would imply that we have two deadly attacks back to back in that window of opportunity - one melee + one special, most probably, one of which is probably predictable and predicted. You ALSO need to have all the healers focusing the raid due to some massive damage.

Look, the short of it is: it's going to save our butts at one time or another, either because we derped or a healer did, or the damage intake has gone out of whack for some reason. Those events aren't going to last long, and if they did, we'd probably be planning a CD around it and they'd probably be less dangerous to us. So the choice is simple: either we wipe, blame whomever fucked up and try again, or we take one for the team, lose 10k dps TOPS, keep living, and maybe, just maybe get that kill.

Ardent defender was only overpowered because people exploited it to get around certain boss abilities. I am assuming bliz will design the bosses around that knowledge.

Like they did with Divine Shiled this very expac. Oh.

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

Another kill event is a big attack takes you down to 20% health say. The following melee then kills you. You survive the melee thanks to the cloak and then the tick from a tank switching stackinj DoT (bliz loves them) finishes the job. With or without the cloak you die.

We already have a cheat death in AD/ guardian spirit l for the predictable deaths, its the unpredictable ones where this would come in handy and that's unpredictable for us and the healers.

Edit: don't get me wrong it's a great addition and very powerful, I just don't think it's as powerful as it first looks.

Thing is it's unpredictable stuff that kills tanks, not predictable one. If you die on a predictable damage ability, you did something wrong.

AND even if you DID do something wrong, the cloak would save you.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.